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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> In lugnet.admin.general, Thomas Main writes:
> > [...] The newsgroup rating system would be simpler for me if there were
> > less choices...and I think it would be more objective (of course the
> > recommendations page would also address this problem).
>
> Do you mean that from the point of view of a producer or a consumer of the
> rating information (or both)?
I think both would be useful...
>
> As a producer of ratings, it is certainly your right to treat the rating
> levels more coarsely if that helps you produce ratings more comfortably or
> more quickly or more meaningfully to you. In other words, if you wanted,
> you could apply this approach:
>
> - Liked it: mark it High (100 -- the rightmost choice)
> - Didn't like it: mark it Low (0 -- the leftmost choice)
> - No opinion: leave it blank
And the few times I have used the system...that's the way I've used it. I
marked a few articles I read at "100" -- I don't think I would ever rate an
article "0" though...I only rate things that I think are really important (who
cares if I think something is really *not* important...I guess I just don't
like to spend too much time focusing on the negative). One thing I really
don't understand is who goes to the trouble of rating articles that everyone
realizes are not important....like maybe the "me too" posts (in general groups,
not the new LEGO ones) or auction posts that just convey information about an
auction. To me, it seems like a big waste of time on the part of the person
rating.
>
> The system is designed to work whether people always rate 0 or 100 and never
> use anything in between (ultra-coarse), or whether they use the 11-point scale
> from 0 to 100 by 10's (moderately coarse), or whether they use the 101-point
> scale from 0 to 100 by 1's (very fine). (There's currently no interface which
> actually uses the whole range 0 to 100 by 1's, but the system will handle it
> if someone wrote a custom client to submit fine-grained ratings. The finer-
> grained ratings will be more useful for things like sets and websites, of
> course, and not too useful for news articles since they are so temporal.)
>
> As a consumer of ratings, any method for calculating a rating which averages
> input ends up producing some sort of multi-position scale. That is, even if
> only two inputs are is 0 and 100, the average of several values still might be
> something anywhere in-between such as 57 or 83.
I realize this...and that's fine...I think the resulting "average" is more
representational of the entire group's opinions, rather than the "weighted"
opinions of one or two persons who chose to use coarse versus fine rating
scale. For instance...since folks have the option of rating a post "60" and
most people will take advantage of the available options and rate things in the
gray area between 0 and 100. If I continue to just dole out "100s" that's
skewing the average and it's not fair. I either have to ask for a simpler
system or try to use the "fine" system as it's intended.
>
> As a consumer of ratings, would it help you more or less if the output had
> fewer degrees of freedom? Siskel & Ebert used a 5-degree system for rating
> movies: -2, -1, 0, +1, +2. Other rating methods include use 4-star or 5-star
> systems and some of these even output 8 or 10 positions by giving halfs as • well
> as wholes (i.e., "3 1/2 stars"). Then there's the classic primary-school
> rating system of A, B, C, D, F, sometimes with +'s and -'s, giving a 15-point
> scale. And then there's the classic secondary-school rating system of a 0 to
> 4 (or 5) point system producing extremely detailed average GPA's with 4
> significant digits.
>
> Giving a two-digit rating 0 to 100 which is intuitive in the sense of a
> percentage seems like the simplest general-purpose way to go for something
> where the domain of input (articles) spans the entire emotions-range from
> incredibly exciting to incredibly disgusting.
>
> Would you find it useful as a consumer or producer of ratings if you had the
> option to specify how many choices (radio buttons) you saw when you rated
> messages and how many scale-steps you saw when you viewed ratings?
>
> --Todd
As a consumer, I'd rather not see the ratings at all ;) Usually I read LUGNET
through a newsreader, so I don't see the ratings, but occasionally I peek at
the web page and see that this or that article was rated a certain way and I
think, "Wow, someone has a lot of extra time on their hands," or "Why would
someone rate this article so low," or "Wow, that rating seems petty and
vindictive to me...I wonder who is doing all this rating anyway?"
As a producer...well, I think it's best if I don't rate posts because I don't
want to mess up averages by giving out 100s and I don't want to have to think a
long time to try to come up with a number between 0 and 100 (particularly, if,
you're like me and would rate the same message "40" one day and "60" another
depending on when you read it, what you were thinking about at the time, and
all the other random things that contribute to scoring subjectively.)
--
Thomas Main
main@appstate.edu
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Thomas Main wrote:
> And the few times I have used the system...that's the way I've used it. I
> marked a few articles I read at "100" -- I don't think I would ever rate an
> article "0" though...I only rate things that I think are really important (who
> cares if I think something is really *not* important...I guess I just don't
> like to spend too much time focusing on the negative). One thing I really
> don't understand is who goes to the trouble of rating articles that everyone
> realizes are not important....like maybe the "me too" posts (in general groups,
> not the new LEGO ones) or auction posts that just convey information about an
> auction. To me, it seems like a big waste of time on the part of the person
> rating.
I just thought of a way to alleviate this problem.
Don't publish the average rating unless there are at least N values (N =
10?).
If there are fewer than that many values, just say "insufficient sample"
or
something like that. That way only the articles that people feel are
important
will will get ratings, and articles that are irrelevant will continue to
be ignored.
I also think the idea of starting at 0 and going up is a good one, but
that
is an independent decision.
/Eric McC/
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In lugnet.admin.general, Charles Eric McCarthy writes:
> I just thought of a way to alleviate this problem.
> Don't publish the average rating unless there are at least
> N values (N =10?).
I think that if N can be defined by the users, this would work well. I
personally think that if even one person rates a message that some information
is better than none. However that's just me, and I think that new users would
like to have N a little higher. If it could be changed much like the
"skip-filter", that would work well. I like 10 as a default value, but I
personally would change my setting to 1.
Ben Roller
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In lugnet.admin.general, Thomas Main writes:
> [...] One thing I really don't understand is who goes to the trouble of
> rating articles that everyone realizes are not important....like maybe the
> "me too" posts (in general groups, not the new LEGO ones) or auction posts
> that just convey information about an auction. To me, it seems like a big
> waste of time on the part of the person rating.
Probably depends on how quickly they can rate articles. Through the website,
it's a little cumbersome to give input on everything -- a lot of scrolling and
mouse-clicking and waiting, etc. But using a custom newsreader client, it can
be as fast as a single keystroke.
For example, if I want to rate an article 70, I just press the "7" key on my
keyboard and it queues up a 70 for that article (which it sends to the server
in the background) and then immediately shows me the next article. If I could
(theoretically) actually read 1 article per second, I could actually rate 1
article per second. But my brain doesn't work that fast. :)
My overhead for rating something I've read is probably 1/2 second per article.
I have to hit some key to advance to the next article anyway, so it might as
well be one of the rating keys. If I don't have an opinion, I just hit a non-
rating skip-to-the-next-article key and don't mark the article.
> As a consumer, I'd rather not see the ratings at all ;) Usually I read
> LUGNET through a newsreader, so I don't see the ratings, but occasionally I
> peek at the web page and see that this or that article was rated a certain
> way and I think, "Wow, someone has a lot of extra time on their hands," or
> "Why would someone rate this article so low," or "Wow, that rating seems
> petty and vindictive to me...I wonder who is doing all this rating anyway?"
How about search results? Sometime down the road (a long way, probably) the
search results could take the ratings into account (at your discretion at
search-time) and you could ask the search engine to give higher priority to
articles with higher scores. Would you find that useful?
> As a producer...well, I think it's best if I don't rate posts because I
> don't want to mess up averages by giving out 100s and I don't want to have
> to think a long time to try to come up with a number between 0 and 100
> (particularly, if, you're like me and would rate the same message "40" one
> day and "60" another depending on when you read it, what you were thinking
> about at the time, and all the other random things that contribute to
> scoring subjectively.)
Well, maybe it's not something for you then. (Certainly, it's not for
everyone, because it does take a bit of time and concentration sometimes.)
What if, instead of giving out 0's and 100's, you could give out either a
25 or a 75? (Or some other pair?) Would you find that less intimidating?
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> For example, if I want to rate an article 70, I just press the "7" key on my
> keyboard and it queues up a 70 for that article (which it sends to the server
> in the background) and then immediately shows me the next article.
Apologies if this has been asked before and I missed it, but is this available?
It sounds *extremely* useful!
> How about search results? Sometime down the road (a long way, probably) the
> search results could take the ratings into account (at your discretion at
> search-time) and you could ask the search engine to give higher priority to
> articles with higher scores. Would you find that useful?
Yep! Yep! Yepyepyepyepyepyep! Useful! Yepyepyep!! Yeeeep!
Actually, if that included fuller search capabilities as well (date, author,
subject, etc) then I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one doing bad Seasame-Street
alien impersonations :)
Richard
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In lugnet.admin.general, Richard Franks writes:
> Apologies if this has been asked before and I missed it, but is this
> available? It sounds *extremely* useful!
Mine is a horrible hack crufted together to run in text mode with Curses on
my particular home machine, but Jeremy Sproat has written a general-purpose
platform-independent newsreader in Java, and I think he might be considering
adding rating capability to it. (Or was that Dan Boger?)
(Search for "GUI streaming newsreader Jeremy Sproat Dan Boger"...)
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> In lugnet.admin.general, Richard Franks writes:
> > Apologies if this has been asked before and I missed it, but is this
> > available? It sounds *extremely* useful!
>
> Mine is a horrible hack crufted together to run in text mode with Curses on
> my particular home machine,
If you mean that it would be virtually impossible for me to do some hacking of
my own to get it working, or you're embarrassed to share the source, then fine!
Otherwise, I'm still interested :P
> but Jeremy Sproat has written a general-purpose
> platform-independent newsreader in Java, and I think he might be considering
> adding rating capability to it. (Or was that Dan Boger?)
Yup - these are cool developments, but ideally I want something low overhead -
Linux has started thrashing on my p166 already, and once I start up a few java
instances it crawls even more..
Richard
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In lugnet.admin.general, Richard Franks writes:
> > Mine is a horrible hack crufted together to run in text mode with Curses on
> > my particular home machine,
>
> If you mean that it would be virtually impossible for me to do some hacking
> of my own to get it working, or you're embarrassed to share the source, then
> fine! Otherwise, I'm still interested :P
It's not particularly bad code or anything like that, it's just that it was
an evolve-mode prototype -- didn't know Curses at all before digging in (still
don't know it well) and wasn't sure it would even end up working. It also is
still using an older undocumented pre-avid.cgi gateway to the server for its
incoming feed, so until I update that to avid.cgi, I can't release the code.
But maybe it would be a useful example client if cleaned up a bit and released
with the understanding of no little or support being offered to get it up and
running (I just haven't the time to support it).
> Yup - these are cool developments, but ideally I want something low overhead
> - Linux has started thrashing on my p166 already, and once I start up a few
> java instances it crawls even more..
What I made is pretty low-overhead -- it just uses Perl5 and the Curses.pm
Perl library and runs probably any Linux (although many of the colors are
currently hard-coded for my settings) and typically consumes about 2-4 MB of
RAM while active. Lemme think about what would be involved in making it
releaseable...
--Todd
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In lugnet.off-topic.geek, Todd Lehman writes:
> until I update that to avid.cgi, I can't release the code.
> But maybe it would be a useful example client if cleaned up a bit and released
Funky!
> with the understanding of no little or support being offered to get it up and
> running (I just haven't the time to support it).
Yup - I forgot to mention that I expected no support for it :) In fact, if
someone doesn't take up the challenge before me (I couldn't justify it until
June, so it's likely they will!), it would make a good way to get a bit more
perl experience.
Richard
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> but Jeremy Sproat has written a general-purpose
> platform-independent newsreader in Java, and I think he might be considering
> adding rating capability to it. (Or was that Dan Boger?)
Well, the Java client is mine, but I'm not considering adding a rating
capability until after I can get posting to work (1). Dan is working on a
non-Java client (Perl?), with which he does plan on supporting article rating.
Cheers,
- jsproat
1. Gotta learn cookies. Actually, I just gotta take the time to implement
cookies using java.net.URLConnection, but I've been swamped lately.
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On Tue, 18 Apr 2000 23:07:52 GMT Todd Lehman <lehman@javanet.com> wrote
concerning 'Re: Article rating (was: Re: the latest news)':
> In lugnet.admin.general, Richard Franks writes:
> > Apologies if this has been asked before and I missed it, but is this
> > available? It sounds *extremely* useful!
>
> Mine is a horrible hack crufted together to run in text mode with Curses on
> my particular home machine, but Jeremy Sproat has written a general-purpose
> platform-independent newsreader in Java, and I think he might be considering
> adding rating capability to it. (Or was that Dan Boger?)
I'm still working on my perl/tk based streamer... it's coming along
slowly, since work keeps bugging me. What about addind the
X-lugnet-rating header to avid.cgi, though? Without it, the client
can rate, but won't be able to see other people's ratings... Also, is
it ok for the client to use the raw.cgi to get specific messages, when
needed? Or is that not a part of the published API?
:)
Dan
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In lugnet.admin.general, Dan Boger writes:
> I'm still working on my perl/tk based streamer... it's coming along
> slowly, since work keeps bugging me. What about addind the
> X-lugnet-rating header to avid.cgi, though? Without it, the client
> can rate, but won't be able to see other people's ratings...
The avid.cgi script is meant to serve things continuously, not backward in
time, so adding the header to that doesn't fit its design very well. (It
would also add load to it.) (But serving the ratings via something specially
constructed to handle back-in-time or since-some-time queries efficiently
through another separate script is planned.)
> Also, is
> it ok for the client to use the raw.cgi to get specific messages, when
> needed? Or is that not a part of the published API?
It's not a particularly streamlined script like avid.cgi is, but it's not
particularly inefficient either. It's more efficient than the HTML display
of articles, for one thing, but still really intended for only interactive
display.
It doesn't have a published API, and it wasn't intended to be called from
user agents other than web browsers, but if you access it randomly (i.e.,
right when your app needs to display it to you) without hammering on it
(fetching zillions of articles in rapid succesion), it shouldn't be a problem.
In that sense, your agent would be acting like a browser.
For fetching multiple articles, instead of using raw.cgi, open an NNTP
connection and send:
1. GROUP <group> to change into a group, followed by
2. ARTICLE <artnum> to get the article data.
Repeat at 2 if fetching multiple messages from a single group, otherwise
repeat at 1 if fetching multiple messages from different groups.
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Richard Franks writes:
> Actually, if that included fuller search capabilities as well (date, author,
> subject, etc) then I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one doing bad Seasame-
> Street
> alien impersonations :)
No, you wouldn't be alone!! I'll join with Big Bird any day for those
enhancements.
-Shiri
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> [...]
> Well, maybe it's not something for you then. (Certainly, it's not for
> everyone, because it does take a bit of time and concentration sometimes.)
Yikes, I gotta watch my wording. There's nothing to read between the lines
there -- those are two separate statements. I realise that rating takes time
and that not everyone has time or wants to spend it.
> What if, instead of giving out 0's and 100's, you could give out either a
> 25 or a 75? (Or some other pair?) Would you find that less intimidating?
Intimidating was a poor word choice... I mean, would you find that more
inviting (or less unpleasant)?
--Todd
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